Instagram, the Facebook-owned platform for sharing photos and videos, is gaining massive popularity among the youth around the world. Also, we have seen many influencers and people becoming stars from Instagram only. Recently, Facebook released their report saying that there are now 1 Billion active users on Instagram alone.
This is indeed a massive figure, to add to that, the company says they estimate addition of 1 Million new Instagram users every month. Now, Facebook has been planning to increase this number of Instagram users for quite some time. It seems as if Facebook has found a way to implement it.
The company has silently launched a newer version of Instagram for Android named as Instagram Lite. This is basically a lightweight version of the original app same as Twitter Lite, Messenger Lite or Skype Lite. It is also worth noting that this Lite version is expected to have lesser features than the regular application.
Mainly aimed at the developing countries, Instagram Lite is an extremely small app in terms of size. For reference, Instagram Lite is just 573kb compared to the regular Instagram app which is a massive 32MB in size. Now, this app size may not seem big to you if you are from the UK or the US but it is huge for other countries.
The main reason is that half of the countries around the world do not have the proper internet facility. India had one of the slowest internet speeds in the world at one point of time. However, things have improved quite steeply in the country since then. But, there still remains the problem of lower storage space on smartphones around the world which means that an app with 32MB is just too much to handle.
As we mentioned earlier, Instagram Lite has some drawbacks being such a lightweight app. In this app, you cannot share videos or send direct messages. However, all the other features from the Instagram app are present.